China’s leader Xi Jinping declares the start of a “new era”

IN THE days before the opening on October 18th of the Chinese Communist Party’s quinquennial congress, the country’s security officials put their surveillance efforts into overdrive. On Chang’an Avenue, the boulevard that passes by the venue in Tiananmen Square, naked flames were banned. Tough luck for restaurants, family dinners and smokers. Out-of-towners driving to the capital were stopped at checkpoints and made to sign papers promising not to get into trouble during the week of the congress. Foreigners were barred from travelling to Tibet. The region is well over 1,000 miles from the capital, but the party fears that even a lone banner-waving separatist sympathiser that far away could spoil the event in Beijing.

Such paranoia reflects the importance attached by the party to such congresses. They are convened to add a veneer of intraparty democracy to decisions made beforehand in secret, but those decisions are crucial. The congress, the 19th since the party’s founding in 1921, will revise the party’s constitution, reshuffle the leadership and set the tone for policymaking in the next five years. This one matters more than most: it is the first presided over by President Xi Jinping, who is the party’s chief and will undoubtedly remain so.